The Adventures of Rajah (and notes on an up-and-coming artist of my acquaintance)

Meet Rajah, a well-loved friend (so well-loved that the outer layers of his nose have rubbed off):

He's an important part of everyday life for a certain young friend of my acquaintance. In fact, this certain young friend INSISTS that Rajah MUST be present for proper bed time protocol to be followed. Unfortunately Rajah is almost invariably missing when it's time for bed. He has an almost uncanny ability to be present minutes before bed (eg during bed time story reading) but then suddenly disappear when the actual moment of getting into bed arrives. It's quite a talent!! (Perhaps he takes after his namesake - a tiger from a Disney film).

Usually a house- wide search for the missing "tiger" ensues involving my young friend, his siblings and any hapless adults who happen to be present. Rajah is usually eventually found but sometimes in the oddest places:

Sneaking in from a quick trip outside:

Tigers love warm laundry

Hiding out underneath the couch cushions (a frequent spot):

Hanging out with a bunch of other toys

Attempting a 60's revival

Rajah has famous friends!!

He's very tricky, sometimes he hides in the bed, where he's supposed to be all along!

Sometimes he's actually been tiger-napped

And sometimes he just wants a bedtime snack

But after all is said and done, Rajah usually finds his way back where he's supposed to be and he and my young friend (FINALLY) get to bed as happy as ever.

Notes on an Up-and-Coming Artist:

Actually, Enoch took most of the photos you see above. I told him what I wanted to do because we'd had so many Rajah sagas when I was living with them that I felt it deserved a blog entry. Enoch loved the idea and wanted to use my camera. We discovered that he actually has quite a talent for it. He took a bunch more but here are 5 of my favorites - fabulous for a 4-year old!!

I call this first one: "Still life in shades of blue"

Next: "Sunday Feet":

I actually stuck this one in because I rarely like photos of myself and I liked this one
Next: "Surprised sisters"

Finally: "Portrait of the artist as a young boy"
Kind of fun eh?

Updates - my (apparently) semi-annual blog

My cousin Sara was quite right to not hold her breath while waiting for the next edition....it's been a really long time since I've blogged. I always use the fact that I don't have any kids or pets to take cute pictures of as an excuse for not blogging regularly. That's part of it but mostly I just always find other stuff to do...but, for those of you who have been wondering (I'm sure very few!!). Here's a summary of the last few months:

March : Work, interspersed with a fun cruise with Mom, Dad and Alita. Embarassingly enough, I hardly took any pictures. Dad always takes so many that I didn't feel the need. Please see their blog if you really want to see the pictures. (I personally didn't feel the need to add any more pixels involving me in a bathing suit to cyberspace)

April: More work, interspersed with packing up my house, getting rid of the vast majority of my furniture and stuff and moving the rest to Mom and Dad's house (My net-worth now consists of 12 boxes of books, 4 boxes of kitchen stuff, 8 boxes of other assorted stuff and 4 suitcases of clothes + 13.5 years of post-secondary education)

May: Living in Toronto, Ontario for a month doing a rotation at the Tropical Medicine Clinic. (Very fun (although my definition of that word might vary from other peoples') - all kinds of weird infectious rashes, malaria and LOTS of people complaining of diarrhea) I got to do a bunch of fun things - ran into and got to play with a bunch of old friends. It was great!!

Here's a picture of the Toronto Skyline from Leslie Spit (the name of the little peninsula we'd ridden bikes to)

And, here's a picture from the CN Tower looking out over towards Leslie Spit

This is me rappelling down the CN Tower....just kidding, of course this is the classic glass floor picture

AND, this is why you shouldn't agree to let strangers take pictures of you at tourist venues

June: Final month of work as a resident - HURRAY!!! Amazing! (I can't believe I'm actually done!!!!) Fun too because I got to live in Paul and Heather's basement. A photo of the kidlets and me playing with the "Photo-booth" feature on my beloved Macbook:

July: For the middle two weeks of July I actually worked as a staff physician at the hospital I trained at (ironically I have NO pictures of the University of Alberta Hospital despite spending at least 65% of the last 7 years there - no joke, at least 65% - there might be some deeper meaning in that) I think I worked WAY harder than I ever did as a resident, averaging about 12 hours a day for 14 days in a row - you can ask Heather and Paul and the kids - they were hardly aware I was living there. Ah well, it's now going to finance the next 6 months of my life so all is well.

Prior to that I did get to the Lund Family Reunion. Tons of fun, and enough of a "baked beans, KFC and jell-o salad" fix to last me until the next one 2 years from now. (Aside: One of the recurring questions of my life: Why is is called jell-o SALAD??? There's absolutely no vegetables involved....) You can only see 2 containers of KFC in this photo - I promise, there was 10 on the table, I opened them myself.

Some cute pictures of various festivities that weekend (note how I get around the "not having cute kids or pets of my own" barrier - yep, that's right, BORROWING them)

Later in July I got to take a quick trip down to Seattle, Washington to attend my cousin Kjarsta's wedding reception. I hadn't seen my so-called Seattle cousins in way too long a time so it was such fun to see them and catch up. They looked stunning!! (And Grandpa and Grandma Salmon look pretty cute too!!)

August: (Whew, this is getting pretty long!!) Spent trying to get everything ready for the big move to the great US of A. Dad and Mom and Alita and I took a fun road trip to Chicago, stopping at such highlights as:

Custer National Battlefield Park (or whatever it's called)

Mount Rushmore

Needles Highway

We stopped at Winter Quarter's and then got to Nauvoo, where we dropped Alita off for EFY and went to see Scott, Sue Ann, David and Lydia in Chicago. What fun!! We went back to Nauvoo and toured around there for a couple of days. I then said farewell to the folks and went back to Chicago so that I could take a flight to BOSTON, my new home. (Disclaimer: my camera battery has malfunctioned so there are really no more pictures after South Dakota but I promise to try and get it working so that my family can see where I live in Boston). YAY.